Brain-to-Brain Interfaces

The second most popular issue in our third annual poll of Emerging Ethical Dilemmas and Policy Issues in Science and Technology is "brain-to-brain interfaces," which earned 17% of the total votes as of March 2015. Below we've provided more information about this topic to serve as a resource to students, educators, journalists, policy makers, and concerned citizens.

Brain-to-Brain Interfaces

It’s no Vulcan mind meld, but brain-to-brain interfaces (BBI) have been achieved, allowing for direct communication from one brain to another without speech. The interactions can be between humans or between humans and animals.

In 2014, University of Washington researchers performed a BBI experiment that allowed a person command over another person about half a mile away, the goal being the simple task of moving their hand (communication so far has been one-way in that one person sends the commands and the other receives them). Using an electroencephalography (EEG) machine that detects brain activity in the sender and a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil that controls movement in the receiver, we’ve achieved a BBI twice – in 2014 scientists also transmitted words from brain-to-brain across 5,000 miles. In 2013, Harvard researchers led by Seung-Schik Yoo developed the first interspecies brain-to-brain interface, retrieving a signal from a human’s brain (generated by staring at a flashing light) and transmitting it into the motor cortex of a sleeping rat, causing the rodent to move its tail.

The ethical issues are myriad. What kind of neurosecurity can we put in place to protect individuals from having accidental information shared or removed from their brains (especially by hackers)? If two individuals share an idea, who is entitled to claim ownership? Who is responsible for the actions committed by the recipient of a thought if a separate thinker is dictating the actions?

(Human-human)A Direct Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans (PLOS ONE)
A write-up of the study at UW-Seattle on BBI between three pairs of humans using a combination of electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Conscious Thought Transfer Between Two Humans (PLOS ONE)
Results of an international study (France, Spain, US) showing that brain-computer and computer-brain interface technologies can be combined to produce computer-mediated brain-to-brain (B2B) communication between human subjects (hyperinteraction).

Brain-to-computer (or brain-to-machine) interface is a precursor to BBI technology. This issue appeared on the 2014 Reilly Center List of Ethical Dilemmas and Policy Issues in Science and Technogy. Click here to access those resources.